


The Garden at the End of the Galaxy

by framboise



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV), Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Mythology/Religion, Alternate Universe - Space, Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gardens & Gardening, Romance, Sex in a Greenhouse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2019-01-01 00:50:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12144948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/framboise/pseuds/framboise
Summary: Jon and Sansa were best friends at Starfleet Academy and dreamed of serving on the same ship together, but Jon dropped out suddenly a month before graduation and disappeared.The known galaxy is an impossibly large place but four years into a five year exploratory mission into deep space, Sansa still wonders if she might one day come across him; the orphan boy who dreamed of seeing the stars; the man whom she had fallen in love with, but never told...





	The Garden at the End of the Galaxy

**Author's Note:**

> I love a good Space/Star Trek AU, so I thought I'd write my own. This is loosely inspired by the AOS Star Trek 'verse but please don't expect accuracy/ruthless adherence. 
> 
> Also, Rhaeger is written more like Aerys here.
> 
> If you want visuals for this fic I made a graphic [here](https://framboise-fics.tumblr.com/post/165978244462/jon-and-sansa-were-best-friends-at-starfleet)

 

 

Jon and Sansa had been thick as thieves at Starfleet Academy; they were going to be assigned to the same ship, they were going to see the galaxy together and send obnoxious selfies in front of exotic vistas back to Robb on his farm - Robb, who had been the one who dreamed most of adventure but ended up with a wife and three kids young, a homespun existence in Iowa barely 5000 klicks from their childhood home.

Maybe, Sansa thinks now, our childhood selves, even our teenage versions, don't know what we want, what would be good for us. Is that what happened to Jon? Were all those dreams of exploration, adventure, of serving Starfleet, the wrong dreams?

Jon had dropped out a month before their final exams, left without a trace except for a piece of space rock she had seen on a shelf in his room once, which he placed on her desk while she was asleep the morning he left, so that she would know that he didn't just up and vanish without thinking of her.

If only she had woken up when he came into her room, been roused by the soft clunk of the rock being set down. She would have known from his face that he was about to do something monumentally stupid, that he was in trouble - for there had to be something wrong for him to leave like that, to not even graduate, to not say goodbye.

 

Her first memories of Jon are of him wandering around her house as a boy, carrying a plushy Enterprise and pretending he was the captain of a Constitution-class starship. He had been in Robb's class at school and Robb had announced when he got home the first day after Jon had transferred that he had met his best friend.

Jon was an orphan and he had been shuttled around to different homes for years; even though he was only six when he came to Winterfell, and before the Starks half-adopted him and prevented him from being moved from the city, even if they could not officially adopt him because they had too many children of their own already and some zealous local councillor had made a regulation about that.

Jon and Sansa hadn't been close when they were children, weren't close in fact until they both started at Starfleet Academy at the same time; Jon having taken a year to travel around the world, saying something young and earnest about needing to explore his own planet before he was too busy exploring other planets to come home. Their rooms in the dorm were across the hall from one another; Sansa sharing with an Orion girl called Margaery, and Jon with a human boy called Sam.

Sansa had been nervous that first day, but when she had looked up from wheeling her ungainly suitcase down the hall, and saw Jon's familiar face, all the nerves had vanished.

 _Hello, Sansa_ , he had said, and she had wrapped her arms around his neck in a hug that he returned just as fiercely.

That night they got drunk with the other students and helped each other stagger back to their rooms, Jon giving a drunken salute to her in the hall on parting, a gesture which became the way he would always say goodbye.

What she wouldn't give to see him again, even for just an hour.

To see his face break into the smile she thinks he had only for her; to hear his laugh; to mock his frequent sullen moods; to borrow his clothes which always smelled better than hers; to make dinner together, like they had done when they moved into the apartments reserved for final year students, along with Sam and his girlfriend Gilly, and Margaery; to listen to him talk about plants and botany with that far-off dreamy look on his face; to have him listen, with equal attention, to her talk about breakthroughs in xenolinguistics and the made-up languages she had dreamed of the night before.

What she wouldn't have given for him to say a proper goodbye, to salute to her before he ventured off into the galaxy, instead of slinking away in such a way that made her feel like a bad friend, that made her worry.

Is he still hurting, wherever he is now, did he find what he was looking for, is he happy, does he think of her?

 

She's holding the rock he gave her now, palming it between both hands, in the habit that formed soon after he left and has stuck no matter how far they travel into deep space, and how much time goes by. The labs hadn't been able to tell her where the rock came from, nor did they have name for its atomic make-up; at the beginning she thought it might have been a message, that maybe he had gone to the place where the rock was from, but then she realised she was just grasping at straws.

She's listening now to the ship's natural hum, trying not to dissect and analyse it as a language of its own the way her mind automatically does when she's tired and has been on shift too much that week, and thinking absently about the system they're on their way to, the languages she might encounter, the party Margaery has planned for her brother's birthday. But all this is background noise itself to her thoughts about Jon.

Why can't he send her a damned subspace comm; just a few lines saying that he's alright, that he's still alive? _She's_ easy to find, unlike him, her name is there plain in the ship's manifest.

She's right here where he was supposed to be, serving Starfleet, exploring the galaxy; getting drunk with Margaery and making bad decisions about who to sleep with; solving xenolinguistic puzzles; sharing gossip with the crew; getting in and out of diplomatic quagmires; filling her senses with new planets, new languages, new plants, and new constellations.

He was supposed to be here and see her be promoted to bridge crew comms, to dry her tears when her friend Jeyne was killed in a rockslide during a planetside survey, to smile over the pictures Arya sends her of fencing tournaments across Federation Space; to point at the stars and imagine what comes next, what marvels await them.

Is he on one of those stars she looks at? Have they slipped past him in hyperspace, never to return to his little corner of the galaxy?

She asks about him everywhere she goes, makes inquiries and searches manifests and logs; even if he doesn't want to be found, she stubbornly believes that she deserves a goodbye at least.

She puts the rock down on her desk, unwittingly following the same motion that he performed four years ago and hating that she's always reminded of it. She stares at the rock for a moment, the secret shimmer that takes practise to be able to see, and then turns off her light and leaves her room for the bridge.

 

*

 

They're orbiting a Class M planet with unusual readings, in a perpendicular orbit to a D'Kora-class Ferengi ship, and the only life-signs on the surface are that of the Ferengi landing party itself. The Ferengi are a humanoid species who value profit-making above all else and the United Federation will be very interested to find out what they might be searching for here.

But Sansa isn't thinking about the planet they're orbiting, she's thinking about the other Class M planet in the system that the ship's computer has yet to scan; and the strange frequency she's been picking up from it. She can't pinpoint an exact origin for the sound, because it appears to be emanating from the entire planet.

She waits until the first landing team are back from their encounter with the Ferengi, to ask for permission to be transported with the first team to the second planet in a few days time, once the ship is finished with its cursory exploration of this one, and the captain agrees.

 

At dinner, the mess hall is abuzz with the information the team has brought back, while Sansa still broods about her frequency, the strange sense that she could swear she had heard it before, even though she had found no matches at all in the database.

Margaery's the one to kick her under the table and tell her that her food is going to go cold if she keeps mooning over Harrold Hardyng.

"Who?" Sansa asks, with a frown, and then remembers the terrible encounter she had with the man in question a few months ago, how she fled back to Margaery's room before he had even got his trousers off, because he had brought out a pair of furry shoes for her to wear "during coitus."

"Ew, Margaery," she hisses, "don't remind me."

"I had to get your attention somehow. What's on your mind?"

"The sound from the second planet," she shakes her head, "I feel like I've heard it somewhere before,"

"I should have guessed it was work you were thinking about, Miss Dutiful. Haven't you heard what the Ferengi said?"

"No?"

"Well, one of them was very chatty for some reason, and mentioned that they'd had an encounter some months back with a Targaryen, back near the core of the Alpha quadrant,"

"Bullshit," Sansa says, as she chews her sandwich.

"He swore he did."

"He's lying to us because he wants something."

"Maybe so," Margaery says and shrugs. "But we've all heard the rumours that," she bends closer to Sansa as she says this, "Rhaegar's younger sister is out there in the galaxy somewhere, building up a small empire of her own."

"Until we have proof it's just a rumour."

"I think the higher ups know but are keeping it quiet in case people panic,"

"What's this now?" Yaya asks, sitting down next to them with her tray.

"The lost Targ," Margaery says.

"Ooh, I love a good ghost story," Yaya says.

Sansa likes Yaya because she is as sceptical as herself, and she helps to balance out Margaery's crazy schemes. She met Yaya on her first week of school when Sansa was having a tired cry on the walk back to her dorm and Yaya had seen her and invited her back to her rooms; cheered her up by showing her photos of Yaya's nerdy Uhura shrine back home. Yaya still chooses to wear the miniskirt uniform that few other women wear, in homage to her hero.

"You don't believe she's out there, the sister?" Sansa asks.

"She might be, but why worry about _might be_ 's, I'll wait for credible proof," Yaya says.

"If Starfleet do know anything, I hope they've got a plan," Margaery says.

The Targaryen were a warlike humanoid species that had ravaged the galaxy for many generations, and Rhaegar, the last Targaryen Emperor, was the worst of them all.

Their species suffered from a blood fever every few months, which was originally a mating drive; a fever they could also spark in themselves more frequently if they wished, and wish Rhaegar did. The fever increased their strength to superhuman amounts and made their bodies heat up, heat up so far that their skin could burn the skin of humans and other races with similar dermal makeup, so far that they could breath flame.

They called their advanced-technology warships Dragons, after one of their ancestors found out about old Earth legends, and they reigned fire and destruction across the universe.

The war that ended their species, or almost ended them if the rumours are to be believed, destroyed countless systems and almost brought the United Federation to its knees.

"You guys talking about the Targ?" Willas, Margaery's brother asks, approaching with his tray.

"Yes, although Sansa's here sighing over a signal from the other planet."

"The Ferengi mentioned that planet."

"Did they?" Sansa asked, sitting up in her seat.

"Yeah, it was strange, they asked if we were here to meet the Gardener."

"The what?"

"The Gardener. Apparently he's the owner of the planet, and he's human."

"He can't be, no one from Earth has ever travelled this far," Yaya said, "he must be another humanoid."

"That's what he said," Willas says, opening his hands.

Sansa is even more intrigued now. The planet has a green colour from a distance, which she had assumed to be the colour of mineral rock, having been disappointed too many times before when she thought they were approaching a forest world. After months of rocky planets, she yearns to be surrounded by a life that reminds her of home.

 

*

 

Willas's birthday is later that night, and with Margaery hosting it, it's a party to remember, but Sansa dreamt of Jon last night, and she can't help but wish he was here with her, that she didn't have to fend off advances from other perfectly pleasant men because she knew they would never live up to her old friend.

She calls Jon her friend, but for the last two years of school she had secretly wished they could been more than friends. Perhaps she had even been in love with him from the start, since that first meeting in the hall of their dormitory.

But romance is difficult in Starfleet, and if she had said something to Jon then either he would have politely turned her down (and broken her heart), or they would have had a relationship with the expiry date of graduation, because even if they had wished to be assigned to the same ship they might not have been, and staying in a relationship when you're quadrants away from each other is difficult.

The second planet she was obsessing over sounded like the kind of place Jon would have dreamed of visiting. Jon had specialised in botanical science at the Academy and she had loved to sit and hear him talk about all the fauna he might be able to discover on exploratory trips and then analyse in a Starfleet lab.

She had loved visiting his dorm room and watching the amount of plants steadily grow and grow, until the walls were more foliage than wall, and his watering routine took a good quarter of an hour. When they lived in the same apartment in the third year, his plants had creeped out of his bedroom and into the common rooms, to the delight of his housemates - for there was something so pleasing about being surrounded by leaves after a day staring at screens in the sterile rooms of the lecture halls.

Sometimes, she had come home from a long day of lectures, to hear him singing to the plants, and when she asked him what song it was that he sang, he said it was an old Earth song one of his foster parents had sung to him before he could remember.

What kind of a man looked as attractive as Jon, was as charming as him, and as _kind;_ what kind of man could win a fight in the simulator with a fierceness that had scared away any other recruit from volunteering to be his opponent (and which made Sansa quite hot under the collar when she observed him); and yet still regularly sung to his plants? Honestly, Sansa couldn't understand why half the Academy wasn't in love with him. But maybe they were and they were keeping it just as quiet as she was, pining away with a bruised heart.

There had been one moment, one night when she thought something might happen, only a few weeks before he had left. They were in his room, lying on his bed under the shelter of the ivy plant that had crawled its way across his ceiling, talking about the future, counting down the days to graduation. They hadn't even been drinking that night but she had felt drunk with something as she shifted over to her side and stared at him, his eyes dark in the light of the side lamp, his full lower lip begging to be kissed.

He had reached a hand out and twirled a piece of her hair around his finger, then brushed his fingertip against her cheek and she had felt like she was burning up. His eyes shifted between her eyes and her lips, and he had licked his own as if he was going to kiss her, her stomach had fluttered as if he might, and then he turned away from her, coughed and sat up and said he was tired.

She had never even kissed him, this man she called the love of her life. And now, she never would.

 

*

 

Being transported down to a new planet never gets old for Sansa - that first excited breath you take on the surface of a planet where no other human has ever been; the smells and sights and sounds that rush at you, overwhelming your brain; the not-knowing quite what you will find.

Their ship has identified a population of humanoid figures on its surface, but no actual humans, so the Ferengi must have been lying. The atmosphere is Earthlike and safe to breathe but they've been warned to be careful about the flora and fauna, a warning they don't need since they were all there on the bridge the day they heard one of their crewmates die from an allergic reaction to grass that had looked identical to earth grass, and they've all had to run away from alien creatures chasing them on one planet or another.

The initial landing team is made up of Yaya, who is a medical officer; Margaery, who is an engineer and also wears the colour of command; Sansa herself from comms; and a few security personnel in their customary red shirts.

They've landed near a large built structure that looked interesting on the readings, and out of sight of the humanoids who call this planet their home, and when they've gathered their wits they move to hide behind a thick hedge away from the path that looks like it is used regularly by feet and wheels.

The planet is greener than it even looked on the scans. Lush, verdant, leafy, flourishing. Sansa has run out of words already. They have barely moved a few metres and yet she has already seen thick grass as tall as her knees, trees that blossom pinks and yellows and iridescents and _mirrors_ , flowers a metre high which droop petals as thick and delicate as ballgown skirts, a row of lower flowers that make earth roses look like poor cousins, a bright bush carved - or grown? - into the shape of a giant beast, and just in the distance a row of gnarled trees that looks like an orchard with hard splashes of colour that must be fruit on their branches.

"Beautiful," Yaya says, and they all nod, knowing that they lack the true words to describe it.

And then one of the humanoids comes past, pushing a wheelbarrow. The being is covered in a thick grey fur from head to toe, as if its ancestors might have evolved on an ice planet, and humming to itself.

Their landing team have had to hide because of the prime directive, because they cannot let this species see them and their technology if they have not already reached a similar capability or met other members of the Federation before. Yet, as they watch, the humanoid stops and pulls out a communicator - a _Starfleet_ communicator - from somewhere on its person and talks into it, and then they hear the muffled response of the person on the other end so they know that he is using it as intended, not as a ritual device.

"Well then," Margaery says, "I guess it's time to make our entrance."

They emerge carefully from their hiding place, cautious as to the response they might get, and the humanoid stops as he sees them and then his body shifts and he seems to sigh, the shorter fur on his face moves into something like a smile.

"You are here to visit the Gardener?" he asks, in standard English.

"We are," Margaery says, after a speechless moment, "may you take us to him?"

"I may," he says, and then appears to chuckle with a laugh that sounds like rocks rolling over one another, and beckons them to follow.

"Heads up," one of the security personnel says, "keep alert."

Sansa doesn't think this humanoid is a danger to them but she knows that appearance can be deceiving and she looks around carefully as they are led along the path towards the structure they had beamed down to see, a structure she now sees looks exactly like a large Earth greenhouse.

Her eyes keep catching on the foliage around her, the trees and bushes and crops and plants and grasses. The first spacefarers often spoke of wanting to find a paradise to rival Earth and she can't help but think that they really have found one.

She finds herself speeding up, almost walking ahead of Margaery who leads their team, as they arrive at the entrance to the massive greenhouse, a large opaque glass-panel door.

The humanoid knocks on the door and a shape inside approaches, becoming clearer as it nears.

Sansa's heart is beating thickly in her chest; some premonition, some primal emotion, is rising up in her.

And then the door swings open, and Jon Snow walks out.

"Hello, Sansa," he says, once his eyes have swept the group and landed on her.

 

*

 

Sansa has never fainted in shock before, but if any occasion might call for it, surely it's this.

Yet she stands instead, frozen, and stares at him, as the rest of the team greet Jon with friendly incredulity, since they recognise him too from their time at the academy.

"So you're the Gardener, then," Margaery says.

"I am," he says, and Sansa could cry at hearing his voice again, at seeing him here in front of her, so _real._ "It's a name the Freefolk gave to me, the species that work here on this planet."

"I don't understand," Sansa whispers.

Jon's face creases in a kind of agony when he hears her but he doesn't step forward, he doesn't move to hug her like the Jon she knew before would have done.

"I think," Margaery says slowly, looking between the two of them, "that we might quite like a tour of this planet, a _long_ tour, and maybe somewhere to rest for the night, to sleep under the stars, you know? That sounds nice. Would one of the Freefolk be able to lead us around?" she asks, "And then _Sansa_ , who looks a bit peaky, can have a sit down inside your greenhouse."

"Of course," Jon says, and moves into action.

And soon it is just the two of them standing there, and she has no idea what to do or what to say. Whether to hit him, or cry, or fall to the ground in some kind of fit.

"Come inside, Sansa," he says, and oh she really could cry at hearing him say her name, "There's so many things I need to say, to explain to you," he says.

He holds the door open and she passes him within touching distance, close enough to discover that he smells the same as he ever did, even here at the end of the galaxy on his baffling garden planet.

 

*

 

"You need to start giving me some answers," she says, trying to ignore the stunning surroundings – the plants climbing upwards to the glass ceiling; the shimmering light; the splashes of breathtaking colour; the fountain in the distance; all the _green_ , so bright it seems to hurt her eyes; the _warmth_ in here that eases her tight limbs into a softness.

"I know," he says, and shoves his hands in his pockets, looking chastened. "Let's sit over there," he says, "do you need water?"

"Water would be nice," she says, almost automatically, and takes the bottle he gingerly holds out.

He leads her through an archway made of tree branches, towards a large square patch of grass and flowers, like some fantasy of a floral bed.

"It's fine to sit," he says, "these plants like the pressure."

"They like to be sat on?" she asks, slightly hysterically, bending down, and almost falling because her legs have been weak since she saw him, onto the soft cushion of the blooms of yellow and pink and purple.

"Sort of," he says, with a coy smile that she'd never seen any other man successfully make.

"Is this where you sleep?" she asks.

"No, I have a whole living section back over there. A proper bed and everything."

"Jon, what the hell is going on?" she asks, after gulping down mouthfuls of water, feeling the anger start to boil up again, now that that shock is receding.

"I'm sorry," he says. "Sansa, I'm _so sorry_ for leaving you, for leaving like that without a note-"

"-without a subspace comm, without _anything,_ " she says. Angry tears have started to leak down her nose; but still he sits a few feet away, and doesn't come closer to comfort her.

"I thought it was the right thing to do, it _was_ the right thing to do. It was because I found out something terrible," he says.

"What was it?" she asks, still not understanding why he had to leave without telling her.

He rubs a hand across his face. The beard he started growing in that last year of school is thicker now, suits him even better. His hair is still a riot of dark curls, and the top half is pulled back in a bun, and his eyes are as black as they have always been, his mouth just as kissable. To her surprise she really hadn't exaggerated how attractive he was, and now that he's a man he's filled out and become broader as well.

"Do you remember that night on my bed, that night when we almost kissed?" he asks.

"Of course I do."

"I got ill. I got a fever," he says. "I looked at you and my body started to burn, to heat up. I know this sounds ridiculous, but when you left I had the computers check my body temperature and I was ten degrees hotter than a human should be, and then twenty. And it wasn't just the physical heat. I felt crazed, I couldn't stop thinking about you and what we could have done, obsessing over it, _wanting_ it so badly it frightened me. I had Sam take me to the labs that night secretly and he did tests on me. He did a genetic test on me," Jon says, as her mind whirls with confusion and shock.

"I know who my father was, Sansa. It was Rhaegar."

"No," she says, shaking her head, her hands fisted in the petals of the flowers to either side of her. "That can't be right."

"It is," he says, "and I found out details about my mother too. She was human, and young, she was working on a space station somewhere out towards the Beta Quadrant. And then she vanished and turned up a year later with me on Earth. I was with her for my first two years before I was put in care, but I don't remember anything."

"Oh, Jon," she says.

"And then she died of some stupid Earth disease, that would have been fixed if it had only been caught in time."

"And you never knew about your father?"

"I didn't have a clue until the academy, until I spent so much time with you. There had been other girls, briefly, and it was all normal, you know. But I cared so much about you first, you were special to me, and it seemed to ignite something. I wasn't drawn to you because of my...heritage, or whatever you want to call it; I cared for you first and then the fever came."

"Can you breathe fire?" she asks, marvelling at the hysterical nature of the question the moment it leaves her lips.

"No, my body can't get as hot as a pure Targaryen, there's a limit. But my skin still gets too hot to touch another human."

"That's why you left," she says, understanding.

"I was so damned crazed Sansa. It was like I was a monster from a horror story, I couldn't control the fever, the burning, the anger. I felt possessive and destructive, covetous."

She shivers at the dark look on his face, the pain.

"But you could have told me, you could have said something. Did you think I'd be prejudiced against you and turn you away?"

"Sansa, I was a danger to you. I didn't know if it would get worse - and my fever did get worse later that year - I didn't know what I would do to you."

"Did you attack people, did you hurt people?"

"No, never," he shakes his head firmly, "never. But I didn't know that then. And it seemed to flare up when you were near, I mean historically it's a mating drive, you know, a heat."

She nods, and feels her face start to flush, but any excitement fades when she thinks about the horror he must have felt, the loneliness and fear. "I can only imagine how terrible it must have been for you, Jon, how difficult."

"It was," he says, sounding young.

"But you seem fine now, you look fine," she waves a hand towards him.

"What you're seeing now, of me, is something I've spent years working towards. Years of fever and madness, and scrabbling around in the dirt, and study, and trial and error, and fucking meditation," he snorts, "It's been the hardest thing, getting here, now. If you had arrived even a year and a half ago." He shakes his head.

"How did you do it then? How did you get control?"

"Well, first of all, control is a process," he smiles ruefully, "I know that sounds like some self-help nonsense. But I've had to accept that I'll never totally be in control, that the fever will come and go, that it's part of me. I looked in any Targ records I could get my hands on and found a few vague references to different plants that might help. Thus the garden here," he says, opening a hand, "and the laboratory I have out back. After a lot of trial and error I've synthesised an extract that I store in its gaseous state, and take regularly. It helps, but I've worked hard enough with other things - including a kind of meditation, a method of biofeedback – to know that if it stops helping, or if my supply should ever run out, that I would manage."

She pauses. "So you've spent the last four years getting stoned, is what you're saying."

"Oh, I haven't missed your cheek at all," he says with a smirk.

"Liar, I know you've missed me."

"I have," he grows serious, "I really have, if you knew how much time I've spent thinking of you, and not just in a fever way-"

"Not as much time as I've spent mooning over you, Jon, not a day goes by-" she brings up her hands to cover her eyes and then drops them, not wanting to look away from him for even a moment now that he's here in front of her.

"Sad fuckers us then, pining away for each other," he says. "I knew there was something there between us, it had been there for years, but I didn't want you to go and waste your dreams on me."

"You'll tell me you didn't want me to waste my youth next. I haven't been celibate, if that's what you're asking."

"I wasn't," he says, and she watches him for signs of anger, an unfair test to see if he's still as possessive over her as he said he had been. But he only looks awkward, as if he'd really rather not hear details.

"But no one special," she adds.

"Well, there's been no one at all for me, just me and my right hand," he says.

A branch creaks somewhere, the sound of a heavy leaf or a flower falling.

"Jon, where the hell did you get a garden planet from?"

"From my father. He knew I existed somewhere and he left me a few planets in his will, carefully hidden so that the Federation didn't find details of them and confiscate them with the rest of his Empire."

"A few planets _._ "

"I know! I looked as dumbstruck as you when I found out. And this planet was far away enough from everyone, everything, and it had a terraforming unit in place already. It was a rock planet and nothing would ever grow here so I just changed the parameters on the terraforming system away from Targaryen vegetation to something a little more...eccentric."

"I'll say. Jon, it's beautiful."

"You've only seen a tiny corner yet. There's whole different biospheres and seasons. It's like walking through a dream each day."

"And the Freefolk?"

"They're from a nearby system, an ice planet which you might have guessed. Their world doesn't have many resources and they were chosen to have to leave. They're happy being surrounded by green now though, and I pay well. People buy my plants for extortionate funds."

"So what you're saying is, you're rich, Jon."

"Well, I do own a few planets."

She laughs and shakes her head, stretches out her feet in front of her onto the soft mat of flowers.

"Let me show you around?" he asks, scratching at the back of his neck a little nervously.

"I'd love to," she says, standing up, without expecting his hand to help her, now she knows the reason he hasn't moved to touch her.

 

*

 

He leads her on a meandering tour of his greenhouse, pointing out his favourite plants, telling her the names he has come up with for them, the things they can do. He's searching for cures for other things here, compounds to help the galaxy's many ills, and he lets her peek inside the laboratory that's attached to the side of the greenhouse, explains some of the experiments he's running.

They walk underneath flowers that look like orchids, and he says there's too many different types for him to name and she doesn't say that he should name one Sansa, because she doesn't want to ask if he's already given her name to another plant.

He shows her the plant that he uses to synthesize his remedy, a plain green things with no spectacular blooms or shapes, and, after asking if it's safe, she brushes a finger across a leaf reverently.

Next, it's the pond she didn't know was in here, right at the back, and the plants like Earth lilies, leaves and blooms floating peacefully in its waters.

Their pace slows as they walk between two walls of foliage with curling, twisting leaves and stems whose shape almost make Sansa dizzy, with a fall of flowers over the top of a yellow colour never found on earth.

It's a tight space and she and Jon are only a handspan away from each other. He's watching her as he has been since she came into the greenhouse and she's looking right back, noticing the little flecks of scars, old and new, on his skin, the fine lines around his eyes.

"Can I touch your skin now, is it too hot?" she asks.

"It's warm but yes, you can touch me. I wear a monitor on my wrist that goes off when it gets so hot that I'd damage my plants."

She reaches out a careful hand and rests her palm against his cheek and he shudders and sighs but keeps his eyes fixed on her. He feels warm, as if he's just been leaning against a heater in winter.

"It's a long time since someone touched me," he admits softly.

She brings up her other hand and holds his face, sweeps her fingertips across the plains of it, rubs through the short hairs. He huffs and blinks lazily.

"You're like a dog being petted," she whispers.

He brings up his own hand to clasp one of her wrists loosely.

"It's not just the heat of my skin though, it's the strength," he says, and she can feel the vibration of his voice against her hand which is touching down his neck. "When the fever hits, and even now, I'm stronger than a human would be."

"But careful enough not to damage fragile petals and leaves," she says.

"It's good physical therapy working here."

"I bet the plants love you."

"Well I still can't help them with photosynthesis, but I have been known to accidentally make some of them bloom early in the season."

"I want to kiss you, let me kiss you, please," she begs suddenly. She can't bear to wait any longer, to wait seven more years for the opportunity again.

"Just one then, and gentle," he says, breath heavy.

"I'll be careful," she murmurs and then their lips meet; a soft, plush press; a hint of the heat inside his mouth.

"Are you sure the fever isn't catching?" she asks, when she's stepped back after one teasing lick of her tongue against his bottom lip.

"Positive," he says. His hands are hovering at her sides now, but not touching. And then he coughs, and takes them away. "let's go back to where we were sitting," he says, "back in the fresher air."

She murmurs an agreement, but she knows it won't help. She's burning up now; years of desire, absence, longing. And he's here, right in front of her. He's close enough to touch.

When she's sat back down, she drains half the water bottle, and throws it back to him.

He drinks and then leans back and looks up through the glass of the greenhouse. "Do you think this is a good idea?" he asks, ruefully.

"Shouldn't I be asking you that."

"Sansa if you're worried, or scared of me, nothing has to happen, nothing at all."

"I'm not," she says, a little thrill sparking up inside of her now that neither of them are lying to themselves, or the other, about what is going to happen now.

"But this can only be tonight, you know that. You're on a mission, year–" he prompts.

"four of five-"

"-and I'm stuck here. This is my place here, I'm safe and other people are too. The galaxy doesn't want another Targ appearing from its depths."

"No one has to know who you are."

"They might find out anyway. But I think I'm as happy here as I can be, anywhere else, even though I don't have what would make me happiest with me."

"I know what you mean," she says, tugging at a flower by her thigh, "Starfleet has been– it's been amazing, everything we dreamed of, Jon."

"Tell me about it?" he asks, with that smile he saved just for her, "tell me what you've seen and done."

And as the light of the day fades, she does just that; and he listens eagerly, hungrily, laughing at the ridiculous tales, commiserating at the difficult ones; watching her closely as if he wants to savour every move of her body, every expression, and word, and she knows because she's doing the same thing to him.

 

*

 

Lights glow in the recesses of the greenhouse, the shimmer of the galaxy shows through the thinner atmosphere of Jon's garden planet, and the row of plants that surround their bower glow phosphorescent. The change in light happens as slow as a dream, and then the space is transformed.

"Can we do this, Jon?" she asks, once she's trailed off from describing her latest adventure.

He shifts a little closer to her, but doesn't touch her yet.

"We can if we do it slowly, carefully. If we stop when I say so, or you do."

"Slow," she says, breath juddering, "I can do that."

"Yeah?" he asks, moving closer.

"Yeah," she exhales, and their mouths meet and his hot tongue smooths against her lips and then her own tongue, and she can feel his hot breath meet hers, then glance across her face as he pulls back.

He lifts his jumper up, a homespun Earth kind of jumper that she's forgotten to ask where he got, and stands up.

She watches as he opens his button fly, like some kind of scene from an old Earth movie. Like something from her fantasy.

"Are you going to take your clothes off too?" he teases.

"Yup," she says, unzipping her uniform - and why couldn't she have met him again when she was wearing a flirty summer dress or a devastating sharp suit, why this ugly multi-purpose thing - and tugging it away from her limbs, plucking off her boots, peeling away her trousers. Until she's sat back, wearing only her underwear, waiting for him.

"There isn't anything unusual about your cock is there?" she asks, and he puts a hand between his legs and lets out a tiny grunt, and then a half-laugh.

"Can you keep the dirty words to yourself, at least until we've started? I'm a little overwhelmed here."

"Are you OK?"

"I'm fine, sweetheart," he says, and now he's the one with a word like a weapon; god, the things that name does to her. "I'm in control," he promises.

"I didn't doubt it," she says, and then he's bending down to brush his hot hands against her sides and she can't help but moan, and squirm against him.

He plucks off her bra and holds her breasts in each palm, touching them carefully, brushing his skin against her hard nipples, and this is too much already.

They remove the last of their barriers and he crawls up over her, his nose skimming across her body, and then kisses her deeply, wetly, as she curls her arms around his hot neck.

"What do you want?" he asks her, the question buzzing her lips.

"Everything."

He makes his way down her body, stopping to suck and lick and hum, and then he's between her legs, shouldering them apart and staring at her so intently that her head drops back onto the cushion of flowers.

He takes her apart slowly, gently, with his scorching tongue and lips, and a soft sucking; and she comes with a gasp, and a fistful of his hair in her hand.

"You ready?" he asks her, moving back upwards, bringing his hips to hers.

"Yes," she says, even though she thinks she can't ever be ready for something like this.

"Remember _slow_ ," he says.

"Slow," she repeats, and groans deeply as he enters her just like he promised.

Her hips jerk and he gentles them with a careful warm hand on her hip. He thrusts slowly, deeply, making an aching, hot, space inside of her; his body burning above her.

Slow, slow, and she can't take it and she tries to thrust up against him, tries to get a grip with sweating hands, nuzzling at his jaw, mouth hunting for his.

"Slow, sweetheart, slow," he's saying, and she's coming apart at the seams.

"I'm going to die," she moans.

"You're not going to die, you'd _die_ if I moved any faster," he says, his lips skimming over hers.

"If this is you paying me back for tormenting you-"

"It isn't sweetheart, it isn't," he says, clutching the side of her face with a hot hand.

"I know," she says, voice thick with sudden tears, overwhelmed.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, we can stop, let's stop, this is too much,"

"Don't you dare stop," she hiccups hysterically, "I really will die if you stop."

He moves even slower, deeper, his hips pushing into the welcome hollow of hers, and her legs start to shake.

"I didn't imagine," he gasps, "that your bedroom talk would be quite this morbid."

" _Bedroom talk_. You were the one who seduced me with all your talk about mating fevers and heat."

"Are you hot, sweetheart?" he jokes but god that _word_ , and his body over hers, and the feeling of him nudging deeper and deeper, pushing in and _in_.

"I'm burning up," she murmurs.

"Now you know how I feel," he says, and then their words desert them.

He pulls out when he comes, come splashing on her thighs and the petals underneath them; like hot tea she thinks, but she doesn't have the breath yet to laugh.

He collapses to the side of her, a hot furnace.

"I have an implant, you know," she says, once her heart rate is somewhere near normal. She can't stop smiling.

"Alien," he says, and points at himself.

"Half," she says, "and what, you think your alien sperm can knock me up even with the hormone blocker?" she asks, sitting up on one elbow.

He shrugs and she starts giggling, "this is a bit ridiculous."

"It's a while since I've slept with an earth girl," he drawls.

"It's been Freefolk for some years then?" she jokes.

"No," he says, shaking his head, "I employ them, I can't sleep with them. And besides, fur just doesn't do it for me," and she laughs a proper laugh that makes the hot aches he has made in her body twinge pleasurably.

 

*

 

Later, they trail over towards his living space, plucking petals and leaves from their limbs; and Sansa makes a crack about Adam and Eve that he responds to with a sullen, unimpressed look that makes her clutch him to her and feel so very fond.

She drapes a blanket around her as he bustles around the kitchenette, making her a very late dinner.

"What _is_ that sound," she says, looking at the monitor on his desk nearby, which is showing the same frequency pattern she heard from the ship.

"You heard that, huh," he says, a little bashfully. "So you know that song I used to sing to my plants when we were at the academy. Well, I started singing it here too, and they must have learned it from me somehow."

"The plants," she says, delightedly.

He nods, "it's something to do with the vibration of their roots in the earth. It's like a chorus."

"Oh Jon, that's wonderful, bizarre but wonderful."

"I never imagined my plants would start singing back to me one day!" he says, laughing, but she can see from the tears in his eyes that he was touched by it too.

"Does the song have words? I've only heard the music."

"It does," he says, and rubs a hand across his mouth. "It's a very old Earth song, a Scottish song, about a _boy who was born to be king_ being ferried in a boat towards an island to safety."

Her eyes prickle. "Your mother sang it to you then," she says.

"Yes," he says, "I think she did." He presses his lips together and he rubs the back of his hand across his eyes.

"Can I hug you, Jon?"

"Yes," he repeats.

"I'll be gentle," she teases and then her arms are around him and she feels the laughter of his body against hers.

"You smell just the same," he murmurs into her hair.

"That's what I thought," she says.

"Although now you smell like me too," he adds, masculine – or would it be alien? – pride clear in his voice.

"Got to mark that territory in case I come across another half-Human, half-Targaryen, who I've been irrevocably in love with for years," she says, hiding her face in his shoulder.

"You're the only human for me, the only woman. Sansa," he pulls her back, "I love you, you know that. Like, I can't even explain how much I love you,"

"I know," she says, not even teasing him for his ineloquence.

 

*

 

After dinner, he takes her to his bed to sleep for a few hours, and then wakes her up just as dawn arrives, the colours of it startling through the glass of the roof.

"So what now?" she says, resting the side of her face on his chest, her own personal heater.

"Now," he says, smoothing a gentle hand down her back, "you'll go back to your ship and keep exploring the galaxy with Starfleet, being amazing and beautiful and intelligent, making all those xenolinguistic breakthroughs you dreamed of making, getting that talented tongue of yours around new languages no human has ever spoken. And I'll stay here, safe, with my plants."

"A one night only deal then," she murmurs.

"Maybe I'll see you again one day, when I'm sure that I've got myself under enough control to trust myself somewhere busier, back in the Federation. But Sansa, I can't promise that. And my planet is so far from yours."

"We're like one of those couples from the old space soaps then, divided by half a galaxy." She knows that their parting is going to hurt, but now she's warm and soft and dreamy, held in his arms.

She lifts her head up and they kiss, she shivers at the heat of his mouth and tongue.

"I think your control is pretty good," she says, lying back down, and stretching her toes out underneath the blankets.

"Sansa, you know what my father did, you know what they were like. If I have to exile myself here, alone, for the rest of my life, I'd do it gladly to save anyone any pain."

"But what about your pain?"

"I'm not in pain. I'm just a bit sad."

"That's not fair either," she says, and kisses the space over his heart, feeling fond and sad and aching for this sweet man.

 

*

 

Margaery announces herself with a call from outside, and Sansa gets up to pad over to where she left her clothes, on the mat of flowers that looks as healthy as ever, despite what they've put it through. She brushes her hand across a few open blooms as if to say hello, or goodbye.

"I told you they liked being sat on,"

"I don't want to hear about your weird flower fetishes," she says, hitting him with the sleeve of her jacket as she tugs it on, and then watches him cover up all his lovely warm skin with his clothes again.

"You look so amazing, Sansa," he says, "I mean you've always been pretty, but now that you're older you're just, wow."

"Same to you too, and the beard finally looks good."

"I'm quite proud of it," he says, sticking out his jaw and rubbing it with the back of his knuckles, looking perversely younger, in the way teenage boys get over the useless bits of fluff on their cheeks.

"But don't go thinking that you have to match the hirsuteness of the Freefolk."

"I'll keep that in mind. Hirsuteness, that's a big word."

"Well I do specialise in linguistics," she says, wondering how long they can stay here in this little bubble of warmth and good feeling, wondering how long she can put off her departure.

He must be thinking the same thing, and he takes her hands carefully in his.

"Sansa," he says, "I just wanted to say that I was going to reach out to you soon anyway, I was going to swallow my terrible pride and send you a comm. I don't want you to go off thinking that this only happened because of chance, that you would have never seen me again. I don't want you doubting me, us."

"You don't think it was fate?"

"Fate?" his mouth smirks to one side, "you don't believe in fate, you believe in reason and evidence."

"Well, look at us, we're standing in a greenhouse on the edge of the known galaxy, on a garden planet."

He kisses her; a deep, full body, kiss; the two of them curving together; grasping each other carefully, trying to hold on.

And then he steps back, and nods, resolute. His lips are bruised from hers, and hers are burnt from his.

"Goodbye Sansa," he says, and salutes her with that silly little salute, and she bites her sore lip to stop herself from smiling, or crying.

"Goodbye, Jon," she says, "look after yourself," and she walks away from him and out of the door into the fresh air beyond; leaving a cutting of her heart behind to be tended by his careful, hot hands.

 

*

 

Margaery gives her a weighted look when she sees her emerge; a look from a best friend who knows just what a night has meant, and who also knows not to ask too much yet.

"So was it worth it, the wait?" she asks.

"Yes," Sansa says, "let's just say I'll be walking carefully for a few days."

Margaery clicks her tongue knowingly and nods, and then pats Sansa on the shoulder. "Ready to go then?" she asks, carefully.

Sansa nods, and they join the rest of the team who are marvelling about all the things they've seen, the transport that took them to the North and the spectacular waterfalls they saw there, the cross-pollination that created a grass whose colour shifts between spectrums, a flower that looked exactly like an Earth sunflower and yet was as tall as a tree.

Margaery calls up to the ship for transport, and Sansa fights the panicked flutter of her heart. She takes one long look around at the Eden of Jon's planet, and then she closes her eyes and gets ready to materialize back on the ship; back to her life, her adventures, her friends, back out there into the galaxy.

She knows that she'll picture him here, everyday, surrounded by his plants; singing to them, probably talking to them too; reaching out to brush a careful finger across a leaf, a gentle touch to the quivering petal of a flower.

Poor little lost boy; master gardener; heir to the lost Targaryen Empire; inheritor of a portion of his father's passion, she thinks, and all of his mother's softness; a good man. A space prince on a garden planet, at the borders of the known galaxy, like something out of a book he might have read when he was young, an impossible dream he might have dreamed.

 

*

 

One year later, Sansa's mission is over and she's staying on the Starfleet campus for a while, thinking about her next steps – whether to sign up for another mission; teach here; or freelance somewhere out there, near one of the tiny specks of stars she can see in the sky at night.

She's been giving a popular series of lunchtime lectures to present some of the findings of her trip, but the talk today was almost empty. Understandable, with the news that came out last night, the appearance of Daenerys Targaryen, and the press conference she gave.

Daenerys has been working to free several systems of slave planets, and she wants to make an alliance with the Federation, she wants to make amends for the actions of her brother and family, and she has a whole host of species backing up her words. Sansa is pleased by most of the things she's overheard from others on campus already; about how they want to give her a chance; and she's looking forward to seeing what will happen.

She passes by little knots of people talking around a PADD or to each other, as she walks across campus to her favourite lunch spot, the old botanical greenhouse.

It's only Earth plants in here because of strict contamination laws, but if she doesn't look closely, if she lets her eyes drift out of focus, she can imagine she's somewhere else. Somewhere tens of thousands of light years away, surrounded by the green of her dreams.

She's normally the only one in here, but today the door squeaks open before she even has her lunch unpacked. She pauses, and her heart suddenly kicks as she hears the tap of footsteps on the paved path, the echo of them around the glass.

She stands up, terrified to hope, but there he is, walking around the corner, in the same jumper and scuffed boots.

"Hello, Sansa," he says, with a much broader smile than last time, and she trips over to him to hug him, to kiss him carefully.

"What are you doing here?" she gasps, pulling back to stare at him.

He moves closer to kiss her, holding the back of her head gently, his mouth just as hot as she remembered, just as overwhelming.

"Well, the lost Targ has reappeared, and everyone seems quite happy about it, haven't you heard the news? And I thought I'd take a bit of a holiday, and then I heard that Earth, and specifically, the Starfleet campus, was the place to be."

"Will you be here long?" she asks, trying not to sound too plaintive.

"I don't have my journey back booked yet."

"Long enough for us to kiss somewhere other than a greenhouse?"

"Definitely long enough for that," he says, "long enough to test out lots of different beds. What about you, do you have any plans that might eat into our survey of bedlinen?"

"I don't have any definite plans, no," she says, and kisses him; and starts to let herself dream about the possibilities that just might lay ahead; how many happy moments, how much time, they might steal from the universe.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> please comment! I'd love to hear people's thoughts.
> 
> my tumblr: [framboise-fics](http://framboise-fics.tumblr.com)
> 
> and there's a rebloggable photoset for this fic on tumblr [here](https://framboise-fics.tumblr.com/post/165978244462/jon-and-sansa-were-best-friends-at-starfleet)


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